Smart jokes power ‘Croods: A New Age’
It’s been a while since the 2013 animated walkabout with the close-knit caveman clan “The Croods,” and the question is: Was thewait for sequel “The Croods: A New Age” — in theaters Wednesday, Nov. 25 — worth it?
The directorial debut of longtime animation story artistJoelCrawford, whoworked onthe“KungFuPanda” movies for DreamWorks Animation, the production company behind “Croods,” this movie can best be described as “chaotic good.” It’s a blend of smart, irreverent humor coupled with eye-popping, neon-Technicolor animation thatmoves fast and furiously across the screen.
Bothfilmsboast awealth of voice talent, including Oscar winners Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Cloris Leachman, along with Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener and Clark Duke. For “A NewAge,” Leslie Mann, Peter Dinklage and Kelly Marie Tran have been addedtothemix, astheclingy crowd of Croods encounters anewfamily, theBettermans, whose existence threatens their way of life.
That lifestyle is par for the course for your average caveman: a nomadic routine of hunting and gathering. Initially, theonlyproblemplaguing patriarch Grug (Cage) is the chemistry between teens Eep (Stone) and Guy (Reynolds), his daughter and the orphaned boy they picked up along the way in the first movie. Worried they’ll run off together to make their own home, or “find their tomorrow,” as Guy puts it,
Grug thinks he’s found the solution to keeping his tribe together when he happens upon a lush, candy-colored land of plenty behind a tall bamboo wall.
However, thisisthedomain of Phil (Dinklage) and Hope (Mann) Betterman, a pair of groovy, evolved bohemian homo sapiens, who once knew Guy and his family. The passive-aggressive pair quicklysetdesignsondividing Guy fromEep, and connecting him with their daughter, Dawn(Tran). Hijinksandmisunderstandings
ensue, with Guy taking to the creature comfortsof“privacy,” hygiene andsimplemachinestheBettermans can provide, while Dawn gets a taste for adventure with the wild woman Eep. All the while, the parentsbickerandschemeabout which way of life is better: rough-and-tumble togetherness or bougie individuality? The Croods are torn over whether or not theywant to be keeping up with the Bettermans at all.
When a banana shortage causes a feud with a troop of angry punch monkeys, the two tribes have to learn to work together, compromise, communicate and comprehend the different strengths that everyone brings to the table. Allthismessagingisvery much on the surface, the lessons about sharing resources (especially with the punch monkeys), and strength in unity clearly spelled out.
The journey is still fun, though harried. The animation design is bright and colorful, moving as swiftly as the snappy dialogue (the screenplay is by Kevin Hageman, Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher, BobLogan, KirkDeMiccoand Chris Sanders). The writers use familiar tropes but switch them up just enough to feel freshandcontemporary, and there are some clever bits, including a riff on an ’80s hairmetalvideo, andThunk’s (Duke) obsession with watching the prehistoricboobtube: a window.
But because the movie starts at an 11 and doesn’t let up, the runtime feels overly long. However, the voice performancesareexcellent, especially Cage, who brings his signature sense of yearning pathos to Grug the Neanderthal. Watching Grug getwith the Pliocene Era and learn to embrace the newand different does seeminglymake all that chaos worthwhile.